You’ve probably heard it before; remember your time tracking! Maybe you wonder why... This is equally important no matter your position, whether you’re an executive or a regular team member. Time tracking is key to understand how you spend your time, personally and businesswise. It is key to productivity, insight and workflow. When you know which tasks take up the most time, not necessarily the ones that need the most effort or bring the most gain, you can begin to reflect on whether that time is actually well spent;

Is the task important enough to take up that specific amount of time?

Would the time have been more effectively used and beneficial for another task?

Did the task work towards a broader goal? (e.g., the business mission)

Did the task work towards a personal or career goal?

What did the task actually change?

When you’ve got some of these questions covered; it’s time to consider whether something could be changed for the better, making it more efficient; could it be re-organized, does the software or hardware need an update, did you have to wait on somebody or something in order to proceed. What annoyed you in the process? Change it. These are all important questions to ask for both yourself and your team. Rank the tasks based on importance, and allocate your time accordingly.

Benefits of time tracking

Personal insights

Business insights

Productivity increase

Higher effectivity and efficiency

Quality improvements, due to streamlined workflow

Transparency

Cost efficient

Makes you able to reflect, and adapt accordingly.

The insights you get from time tracking can often be an eye-opener. How much time do you actually spend browsing the web, looking through your inbox or trying to find that one document in a pile of folders. There are many automated software solutions available, which at least makes the digital time tracking close to an effortless experience.

RescueTime is an option that works across your devices, and tracks both your personal and business life; which websites and apps do you use the most, and categorizes it to provide valuable insights, incl. an overall productivity score. Based on this score you can compare your workflow on different days. What did work, and what did not work? Another way to do time tracking directly on tasks, is to use a project management solution. These make it easier to manage all of your tasks across the project and organization to provide you and your team with valuable insights.

One option could be our solution, Forecast. Forecast makes time tracking simple and intelligent by using artificial intelligence to predict future time estimations. The time is reported directly on each task by each team member, and the software makes sure to include it in future calculations to improve the time estimations. Insights is automatically generated through dynamic real-time reporting, and presented in a visual manner directly in the system.

The time spent is a key measure of resources needed. It shows whether a specific department needs more resources, in terms of workforce or another input, and it gives you insights on who provides the most value for the team. This is all valuable information both for the team and the organization as a whole. Maybe one person does most of the work. Maybe something needs to be changed in order to bring everybody to the same level. Maybe some would be more interested in relocating to another team in another department. These are all insights brought to the table by your time tracking efforts.

As a team member, use the time tracking to work towards your personal and shared goals. As an executive, use the time tracking insights to provide you with an accurate overview of your team peak, performance, overall well-being and productivity, allowing you to manage resources and distribute tasks evenly.

Major projects are necessary to make big changes, but often some of these projects risk to go over budget, overdue or fail completely. This is often partly due to inaccurate initial planning and estimations. Even for very experienced project managers, and teams as a whole it can be a mind-boggling task to attempt to get all of these factors accurate. This is where intelligent software comes into play. Humans are exceptionally good at tackling the soft-side of project management, and this part will probably not be possible to successfully assist by a machine anytime soon, but the hard-part on the other hand is very well conducted by hardware.

Project managers in both major private, and public organizations are faced with these problems on a daily-basis. How do you estimate time, budget and not least how the whole process is going to plan out - even before the project has begun its initial phases. Estimates like time spent on each feature of the project, budget allocated to each feature, utilization of team members (i.e. employees), and prevention of over-allocation.

Besides, the hard data initial planning - there are also often four other factors in play when a major, often public, IT-project is doomed to fail. These include, lack of a set specific goal of the project, lack of specification or what needs it should fulfill in the end, lack of involvement of the actual users, and last but not least changing requirements and needs during, and after the development and implementation stages. These are all major problems, since it can often take years to develop systems on a public scale, and at the same time they are sometimes following the waterfall-approach and delivered at the end stage. That’s usually not how IT-projects should be developed.

Most modern IT software projects are continually developed, adapted and controlled through an agile project management method. Agile makes sure that new requests are welcome, and that users are involved in the product development. It is open to new, or revised feature requirements, and thus hopefully serves a better product on a continuous basis. In an environment of rapid change and development it is paramount to operate with an agile mindset.

A 2016 report from the Project Management Institute (PMI), shows that for every 1 billion USD spent, 122 million of these will be wasted due to a lack of project performance. A further analysis by Geneca suggests that up to 75% of initiated projects are doomed to fail from the beginning. KeyedIN suggests that 50% of all Project Management Offices (PMOs) shutdown within the first three years, and fewer than 1/3 projects were successfully completed on time and budget in 2013, according to Standish Group. Furthermore a very crucial factor in project management is to have a set plan, stick to it as long as it makes sense, and track the progress on a continuous basis to know exactly where the specific project is in the process compared to what was initially planned out. Though, 1/3 projects (34%) do not have a set baseline to keep it all on track, according to Wellingtone. This obviously needs to change.

What exactly can you do, in order to avoid some of these problems?We made a simple list with things you should definitely take into consideration.

Intelligent estimationsUse intelligent software solutions to estimate and plan your projects. This way you're able to make better justified decisions, based on verified data, for your business.

Specify a project goalWith a shared goal in mind - everybody knows where the project should be heading. Thus, you make sure that the project stays on track, and actually gets the job done in the end.

Determine needs to fulfillDetermine which needs the end product should fulfill. Which gap is it exactly that this specific product should help to close. What should it improve, make easier, more effective, etc. This should usually align with the overall business mission.

Involve the actual usersWho knows best which needs they have? The end user.The actual user should always be involved in the development process. Feedback is crucial, and adaptation is needed.

Project management methodMake sure to use the right project management method. Agile is most often the best fit for projects which are influenced by rapid industry changes. Waterfall is often the best fit for more traditional projects that doesn't necessarily change requirements later on.

Below, we will provide you with a figure of just a chosen few of either completely failed projects, or projects that ended up overdue, and / or over budget. This happened at least partly due to the lack of inspection of some of the points mentioned above. The examples are collected from Denmark, UK and the US.

There are of course various reasons why some of these projects failed either completely or to a certain extend, but what is certain is that artificial intelligence could most likely have assisted the project, managers and teams in their work, and made a more solid foundation for the project to built upon.

Now, all failed projects are not just bad, and a total waste of resources. Many of these projects provide lessons learned, and might be included in another product later on. We always learn new stuff, and it’s certain that some projects will always fail, but with the assistance of artificial intelligence - it’s also certain that at least some of those risks can be limited or completely avoided in a much earlier stage, if applied and used correctly by all team members that is.

We at Forecast, are currently developing a brand new type of project management software that brings some of the more advanced features from major software solutions into a more simplified environment. Thus, making it easier for everybody to manage their projects in an effective manner. At the same time the everyday management is supported by artificial intelligence based on verified data, making your projects more reliable and your business decisions more justified. If this sounds like something you might like to try out - we are currently accepting signups through the form available here.

The startup environment in Denmark and the Nordics overall is rapidly growing, and especially the tech industry is seeing a significant growth in the number of new established companies in the region. Some do even call it the next “Silicon Valley”.

In fact, the Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2017 ranked four of the Nordic countries within the Top 10 on how well a country is doing in terms of attracting new and best-in-class talent from around the world.

There are many suggested reasons for why this might be, but the truth is that it’s probably a mix of various factors and indicators. The basic web of public services that grab you in the case something might go wrong, and makes sure that an absolute minimum fall through — making people willing to be creative and take a risk.

The safe environment, low crime rate, and general innovative view on education and business that both encourage students and team members to be creative. Thinking out of the box should not only be accepted - it should be praised. The open, and globalized labor market. One of the leading markets in terms of infrastructure, internet connectivity, and low costs of mobile internet plans. The organizations helping startups getting started, incl. #CPHFTW, Venture Cup Denmark, Founders House, Startup Village, Vækstfonden, etc.

Another, probably very relevant factor, is the fact that it is free to set up a proprietorship, and / or the new type called “entrepreneurship company”, which makes it easy to get started with no, or only limited, capital. Setup and registration is made easy through an online process, and you can be up and running in a matter of hours.

In 2016, a first time nationwide event was held, popularly called Techtember (tech in September) and Copenhagen Tech Fest — where companies celebrate the tech startup environment in Denmark, and the Southern part of Sweden with Malmö. Throughout the whole month of September various events were going on around the region to support startups, recruit new team members, and in general create awareness around the great ideas that are evolving from innate dreams.

Venture Cup is hosting an annual startup competition, startup booster and mentor programmes to help startups get their funding, and assistance to grow and fulfill its’ potential. We at Forecast came in 2nd at the Venture Cup 2009 competition, and thus assisted us in the early stage. Founders House provides a free workspace for special promising startups. A shared workspace to grow together, share knowledge and experiences. Most universities and academies have similar startup environments, where students can get a table, and grow their business in a motivating environment.

Startup companies with great growth potential do also need somebody to believe in the business idea as well — that’s where venture capital funds come into play. Venture Capitals are important in order for a company to reach its real potential. The largest with a unique focus on technology, and medtech companies in Denmark is SEED Capital. In fact, SEED Capital was quick to see the potential in startups like Endomondo, Trustpilot and Vivino, which are now well-known apps and services on a global scale.

Startups do not grow out of nowhere. They have to be discovered, mentored and often need the fundamental funding to hopefully establish a good solid foundation for future growth. Out of all the potential reasons for a solid growing startup environment, it’s probably the right network of organizations and infrastructure that keeps it all rolling. Collaboration is key.

Examples of successful tech startups from Denmark alone:

Endomondo is one of the leading fitness tracking apps for smartphones on a global scale. It uses GPS, and other built-in sensors to track your activities when you activate it. Thus, it serves as your personal fitness guide right in your pocket.

Momondo is one of the leading flight + hotel discovery apps. It matches your location, destination, date, preferences, etc. with the best flight and hotel offers available. Thus, you can customize your trip according to your desire; luxury or discount travel.

Trustpilot is one of the leading sources of customer reviews on businesses. New potential customers are able to see previous customers’ experiences, pros / cons, and score. The company itself is able to reply directly to each review to say thanks, or maybe to come up with a solution. The service automatically accumulates all the reviews, and shows a total score that is easier to grasp for overview purposes.

Unity is a widely used game engine for computer games. It works cross-platform, and serves as the engine behind a growing number of the games we see on the market today.

Zendesk is one of the leading services to control, and handle customer support tickets. It is widely used across the world.

Iconfinder is an icon-finder service. Obviously. It makes it easier for product developers, and designers to find the exact icon they’re looking for. It provides a platform with millions of icon packages from various artists.

Just-eat is a major platform for fast-food ordering operating in various countries.

Skype has long been the prefered service for online video calls / conferencing, and has been the synonym for exactly that.

Falcon.io is a globally recognized marketing platform that gathers data from various social media channels, analyzes it, and makes it easier to create brand awareness and track customer experience.

Vivino is an app for wine-aficionados. It is a platform for reviews, price comparison, and wine discovery.

Realm is a free and open-source platform and database for mobile apps. It makes it easier for developers of all levels to include some more advanced features into their software.

As you might have read in a previous post here on What’s the Forecast?, bots and “chatbots” are on the rise. Early-adopters and businesses are beginning to emphasize their use of bots — in a way to engage the receiver in a whole new way.

In this post, I will introduce you to some of the best chatbots available out there at the moment — some which have already gained ground even in bots’ still very early stage of penetration. These bots are mainly targeted towards the consumer market, but stay up-to-date in here when we list some similarly useful bots for the business environment in an upcoming post.

Booking a room through Facebook Messenger

The examples of bots below are assembled to provide a list that is available and useful for everybody — thus the bots are globally available, and regional or national bots are left out, but I encourage you to take a look at your local bots as well through search in various bot directories both inside platforms and outside through websites, e.g. Chatbottle.

Tap the bot names for direct links to Facebook Messenger. Some might also be available on other bot platforms.

Customer serviceThe most businesses out there are already providing support and customer service through social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter. This has just been part of the general work of the social media marketing teams in organizations, but now we see businesses incorporating more sophisticated solutions — where the business directly encourage potential customers to engage with their support team through channels like Facebook Messenger.

Some go a step further, and integrate a bot into this chat experience, in order to provide quick assistance around the clock, and at the same time lowering costs of having personnel ready 24/7. Simply search for a specific business, and send them a message — as you would do a friend.

HealthQuestions regarding health, lifestyle, illnesses, etc. can arise at any given moment in people’s lives. Time is often an important measure when it comes to curing an illness or disease, both in terms of how to react to certain symptoms and providing an instant answer to lower people’s worry. Chatbots are an obvious fit for health assistance.

One great example is HealthTap. Through a conversational experience, you tell the bot which types of symptoms you face, and the bot then searches its’ database of similar questions asked by other users both through the bot, and through other means. If several doctors have answered a similar question, you can read one or all of them, and see what fits your situation best.

In the case that HealthTap isn’t able to find an appropriate answer to your question, they have a team of doctors who will answer your question — free of charge.

Availability: Facebook Messenger

NewsSources of news have been one of the first categories to penetrate the chatbot market very quickly. There are a great number of bots already available from across global, national and local news sources — whether it’s general news coverage, technology, fashion or another subject.

Some of these learn your taste over time — this is mainly in the case of bigger brands with a wider range of selections, while smaller independent brands naturally don’t need to learn people’s taste, since they already acknowledged that they like the brand by engaging with it. Some brands are about to integrate the whole checkout process within the bot environment, while others directs you to their website through a link.

Inspiration and LearnChatbots can be as engaging or as simple and quiet as preferred — sometimes customizable.

Epytom Style Strategist sends you styles every morning, new combinations and looks. It learns from your taste over time, and encourage users to send back their matching look for others to gain inspiration from.

Ainstein is a bot that helps you to learn and understand programming languages. You simply choose a language, and how often you want to take sessions towards reaching your goal.

Sure helps you find new interesting venues to eat, drink or hangout — based on your location, price and tastes.

EmojiHEALTH is targeted towards teens and millennials, and encourage people to base their lives on health and wellness. Through an on-going conversation with pictures, quizzes, etc. it keeps their users engaged over time. Fitly and MyWorkout are bots providing you with body-weight exercises which are easy-to-do in a home or work setting. Bearhug helps tracking your periods (it was clever enough to make me aware that I don’t have that…), while Drink H2O simply reminds you to drink water throughout the day.

Akita helps you find events happening around you within a chosen time frame, price and category.

The Green Junkie helps you find healthy recipes within specific categories. The bot is focused on plant-based food — thus a great companion for vegans.

Ask Haley connects parents to experts and creates a private room for questions.

Time wasters and SocialAnother popular category of chatbots is the social and “for fun” bots. These are quick bots that you can reach out to whenever you have a moment, and need a little entertainment.

Swelly is a simple peer-to-peer poll bot. You simply receive pictures and questions anonymously from other people, and then you either like or dislike, hot or not, vote option 1 or option 2, etc. Afterwards, you see a graph showing the current state of the poll, and whether you went for the most popular choice or the other. All kinds of fun polls are going on in there, and you can of course add your own to get other people’s opinion as well.

Foxsy is a matchmaking, friends finder and dating bot that connects to your Facebook account, and helps you find new matches. At the other end of the spectrum, Chatible and Anony both connect you to strangers in the best Chatroulette style — anonymously and easy to leave.

Sequel Stories is an interactive story bot. Initially you choose a story, and through an on-going visual conversation, you choose different options and thus design your own way through the story. Humani: Jessie’s Story is in a similar way a conversation-based story with a very responsive and interactive chatbot. The story is mainly text-based, and adds a very natural language, like texting a friend.

Trivia Blast is a pop culture quizzing bot with games that you can play alone (with the bot), or invite friends around to.

Dankland is a meme creator. You send a picture, and the bot automatically applies a random text upon it.

Automation and assistanceThe assisting bot category is where it gets really interesting both within personal-, and business everyday life. These help you in various ways, and always run in the background to keep you on-track.

More sophisticated personal assistants are expected to evolve in the coming months and years, read more here, but simpler “one task”-bots are already available through channels like Facebook Messenger.

Icon8 is a photo filter-adding bot. You send a picture to the bot, and choose which filter you want to be added to the specific picture. New filters are added and changed on an ongoing basis, and the filter-added image is received instantly — ready to publish on Instagram or similar. Photo Colorizer uses artificial intelligence to instantly colorize a picture — you can send a black/white vintage photo, and receive a brand new natural-looking color image.

HP Print Bot is a very clever official bot by HP. Through a simple conversation you connect the bot to your printer, and afterwards you’re able to send files directly to the printer through the bot. The bot will also keep you updated on the status of ink cartridges, and notify you to refill whenever needed.

Hello Jarvis is a to-do list and reminder bot. You simply tell the bot what you need to get done, and it’ll keep track of everything — remind you whenever a due is upcoming.

AutoHash provides instant image label detection — scans your image and sends back a list of appropriate hashtags for social media (particularly, Instagram). Simple, but useful bot if you’re into Instagram and hashtags.

WTFIT is in a similar way a visual recognition bot. You send it a picture of a specific thing, building, painting, etc., and it will analyze it instantly to provide you with an answer within seconds.

Hipmunk does what Hipmunk does — provide you with qualified flight and hotel search results matching your queries. Similarly, KAYAK does also have a bot doing somewhat the same thing, while Instalocate does live flight tracking and updates.

RemitRadar helps you find providers with the best exchange rates between two currencies. It collects different options, and makes it cheaper to send / receive money globally.

GrowthBot is a marketing and sales bot that aggregates various information about various things, e.g. you can ask for company info, which PPC keywords they buy, or look up an email address.

BONUS TIPAs a reward for reading all the way through (or scrolling at least), I’ll provide you with a simple, yet useful, tip to get a more native experience of your bots by adding them to the home screen of your smartphone.

Through Facebook Messenger, go to your favorite bot, tap the information icon in the upper right-hand corner, and then the three dots at the same place. Tap “Create shortcut”. The bot will now be available directly from your home screen.

2016 was the year where many of the upcoming tendencies within the technological environment began to emerge. Trends that initially go through a phase of introduction among early-adopters, and then through months begin to evolve into the general public. Trends such as virtual reality, augmented reality, internet of things, bots and personal assistants.

What all of these trends have in common is a more intelligent, engaging and personalized experience for every individual user — new technology that includes the user in completely new ways, bringing new opportunities for both consumers as well as businesses.

VR / ARCompanies like Oculus, HTC, and Microsoft have all taken serious steps towards bringing the future of visual content into consumers’ hands over the past year. Especially mobile VR headsets such as the Samsung Gear VR (by Oculus), HTC Vive and Google Daydream brought the average person into a new type of experience. Simply by plugging your smartphone into the headset, people got sucked into another place and got a sneak peek of what the coming years have to offer.

Oculus (by Facebook) has long been the most advanced and developed manufacturer of VR headsets for the consumer market, and has thus also taken steps towards bringing social into the VR experience — a natural evolution. Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, showcased the first glimpse of what Facebook in VR might look like. Through the internet, Mark Zuckerberg was able to connect, and share a physical environment with two fellow team members, play games, share content in real-time, take pictures together, etc. directly on stage with friends from across long distances.

CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, in VR with two team members

Augmented reality on the other hand hasn’t quite gotten to the point where the general market has begun benefiting from it yet. Google Glass has probably been the most promising initiative to bring a real functioning product in consumers’ hands. Though in January 2015, Google stopped producing the Project Glass prototype, and moved the product from the experimental division, Google X, to the main hardware department instead. In December 2015, Google filed a patent for a new version of the Google Glass product, but it hasn’t seen any public attention since. Google Glass is at the moment mainly used by surgeons to have important vital information visible at all times during operations.

Another significant manufacturer within AR is Microsoft. Microsoft has been running prototypes of the Microsoft HoloLens headset, and both a developer edition and a commercial suite are now available for the prices of 3,000 or 5,000 USD, respectively.

Example of a mixed environment with AR by Microsoft HoloLens

Both VR and AR are definitely two technologies that will further evolve over the coming months. Facebook open-sourced code for a full-automatic 360 degree video camera to record an environment, and make it available for VR in an instant. Samsung recently released a similar initiative, namely a fully portable 360 degree camera to help consumers create and share unique experiences with friends and family. On that note, Facebook also made it possible to share 360 degree pictures, videos and live streams directly in the news feed for everybody to enjoy.

This is a significant evolution. Never before has the infrastructure been solid enough to allow for full-blown 360 degree experiences shared across the world, and even less so in the case of live streaming — which requires a very low latency rate between the broadcaster and receiver in order to be an enjoyable experience.

BotsAnother very significant development in the market of technology is the introduction of bots and personal assistants among consumers. Bots use artificial intelligence, also known as machine-learning, to personalize an experience to the end-user. Chatbots have been the first type of bots to arrive, and gain a somewhat significant user base in 2016 — at least among early-adopters. A total of 36,000 bots were published on the Facebook Messenger platform in 2016, the initial year of launch, and other platforms targeted towards different segments did in the same way experience an increase in the interest and penetration of bots, incl. Slack for business, Skype, Kik, Google Assistant, etc.

Example of an everyday scenario between a traveler and an airline

The next natural step was to bring the bots from your pocket (i.e. smartphone) into the living room — available by voice at all times. Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa are two of the first to make this a reality. These have already gained a solid ground, significantly in the home market — United States. Facebook, Google and Amazon are some of the main businesses expected to grow a major market share in the coming years, but other competing manufacturers like Apple’s Siri, Samsung’s Viv, etc. are also expected to enter the market in the coming months.

Google Home (with Google Assistant) in an living room environment

Thus, bots and personal assistants will to an increasing degree replace other media such as websites and apps. Why, read more.

Internet of Things (IoT)Following the trends of intelligent bots, and an ever increasing connected world — time has come to more deeply integrate the entire home. Home appliances, i.e. fridge, oven, coffee machine, etc. will all be integrated and connected through the internet. Similarly, we will also see a wider array of intelligent products, such as lamps, security systems, door locks, curtains, and so forth be connected to bots, as mentioned above, and thus make us able to access our home through the smartphone, no matter where we might be.

Example of a smart lock with display and camera for your front door

Turn up the lights, check what’s in the fridge from the grocery store, automatically start the coffee machine before you get up, see who’s at the door and open remotely, and turn on the oven — so it’s ready for cooking when you get home. These and many other use cases will emerge around the home environment, and introduce you to a more intelligent, inter-connected future.

Autonomous driving, and instant delivery by droneThe most major manufacturers of vehicles have already begun developing technology for self-driving cars, incl. Tesla, Volvo, Audi, among others. Moreover, pure technology companies like Google and Uber have engaged in similar initiatives. Google’s Waymo is active on the roads in San Francisco, and completed it’s first fully automated ride in 2015 with the sole attention of a blind person in the vehicle. The first fully automatic vehicles from Waymo are expected to be publicly available by the year of 2020.

Google’s Waymo connected with a regular car

In the case of retail shipping and delivery services, Amazon successfully completed its’ first delivery by an automated drone in December 2016, a Fire TV dongle and a bag of popcorn. It might take some time before we begin to see mail drones hovering above our heads acting as mail personnel, but it is for sure an interesting future we approach with 24/7 instant delivery of goods to our homes.

These, self-driving cars and mail drones, are two trends that might not find its’ way to the market over the course of the coming year — due to significant factors such as safety, privacy and general political and technological matters. What is certain though is that the next 5–10 years will provide a much better look at what the future has to offer within business and the consumer markets. Read more when we unfold the coming 5–10 years in an upcoming post.

Bots, also known as chatbots, personal assistants, etc. experienced their first major year in 2016 when popular messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger published their first initiatives within the bots environment to the public.

Example of a bot in Facebook Messenger from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines

Social media companies like Facebook are gradually moving away from the traditional news feed, towards a more personal messaging focused strategy — for good reasons. Messaging platforms, like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, outpaced the “traditional” social networking apps, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. in 2015, and since then the growth has only accelerated even more. According to Business Insider, the total active number of users on the top 4 messaging platforms surpassed 3 billion globally in early 2016, while the top 4 social networking apps reached “just” 2.5 billion users in the same period.

Even though chatbots experienced their first publicly recognized year with more than 36,000 bots published on the Facebook Messenger platform — it still didn’t reach a significant user base. The bots were mainly adopted by early-adopters who tried various types of bots for the excitement rather than for the actual usability. 2017 on the other hand is expected to be the first year where the average consumer will begin to benefit and engage with these bots in various different ways, and thus assist them in their everyday tasks.

In the coming months and years, we will gradually see the intelligence, experience and usability of these bots improve, and over time become an obvious part of our lives, similarly to websites and apps have done it in the past. Bots can provide something that both websites and apps have somewhat failed at, namely creating a personalized and unique experience for every user out there. Interaction with bots happens in the most natural way to human, through the spoken and written words. It’s able to remember what you have requested in the past, your preferences, name, interests, location, and so forth in a very time efficient way. Thus being aware of your immediate situation and environment.

Time and quality are probably the two most important factors when it comes to attracting a significant user base. People tend to use the platforms and services which bring the answer to their needs in the quickest and easiest way. Bots are generally expected to outpace both websites and apps in terms of this in the years ahead, while also bringing in the personalized experience — in other words, both the time and quality.

In the coming weeks and months — we will follow up on this post, and update you on what’s currently happening within this subject. Next post will recommend a handful (or two) of the best bots that you should definitely try out right now, and provide you with some user scenarios that you might actually enjoy and benefit from in the future.

Artificial intelligence (A.I.) has taken the media by storm, with new groundbreaking accomplishments by global companies. Google’s DeepMind recently beat a world champion of Go, which is said to be the most advanced board game on this planet. Moreover, DeepMind is now able to assist doctors during surgery, detect risk of blindness in an early state to improve the chances of recovery, and other important breakthroughs such as natural language recognition, object detection in images, and face recognition.

Most recently the DeepMind team has been able to generate natural-sounding music and speech based on data from its neural network, WaveNet. A survey showed that the A.I.-generated voice sounded more natural to the sample group of both English and Mandarin Chinese speakers than Google’s other text-to-speech technologies developed by other means, though WaveNet was still not able to outperform the recorded voice of real human beings.

IBM’s Watson is able to, among other things, gather, analyze, and provide you with detailed insights into your personality based solely on data from your Twitter account. There are already many companies in this space, and the consumer will, in the coming months and years and with or without their knowledge, begin to benefit from some of these technological advances.

One feature that many consumers have already played around with are the personal mobile assistants, including Google Assistant, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Facebook M, and many others. These bots are already helping people perform daily tasks, saving time and energy by making photos searchable with objects and people present in them, uncluttering your inbox, and automatically generating subtitles for your videos. But this is still just the beginning.

One specific space ripe for A.I. help is the project management field — and thereby technically all industries. Major projects, whether on a private or governmental level, are prone to go overdue or over budget, sometimes both. This all comes down to inaccurate planning in the initial phase of the project. It’s an ideal target for machine learning.

Project managers face on a daily basis a large number of unknown factors that need to be taken into consideration before, during, and after the project: estimates, employee allocation and utilization, task management, and more. There are many unknown values to play around with, which often turns into too much information. A few examples from Denmark suggest that even very experienced entities encounter these problems, e.g. the Eurovision Song Contest in Copenhagen, Rejsekort (the Travel Card system for public transportation), and the national digital health journaling systems. There are many other examples from Denmark alone.

To help this problem, artificial intelligence and machine-learning technology are now beginning to penetrate the market for project management tools. Right now project managers are only able to base their decisions, estimates, and so forth on their own previous experience and cannot automatically benefit from the knowledge that the rest of the world’s project managers are dealing with. That is where artificial intelligence comes in. Intelligent software is able to grasp data from across organizations and various types of projects (whether private or public) and tasks, anonymize this data, and create an algorithm to more accurately estimate some of the unknown variables including the schedule, budget, and resource utilization.

For every piece of data added to the intelligent project management system, the A.I.-generated algorithm will be updated and improved. This results in better and more justified decisions from project managers, as well as the individual team members. In the end, providing and supporting more stable projects that stay on track makes your team able to deliver better projects in time and on budget.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is probably the most rapidly growing new type of technology, and will for sure create a new era of the modern world as we know it today. Modern AI simulates the constant processes going on in our bodies every second of our lives, the human brain and nervous system. The nervous system takes every little piece of information in, through all of your senses, analyzes it, and decides what to keep and what to let go of. You learn from the past, gain experience, to improve your future. This is an ongoing process, and through time you learn to make better decisions; your intuition learns to navigate the world - you automatically improve over time. The is the essence of artificial intelligence.

AI gets the same constant input through an inflow of data, which is stored in the neural network. The same principle, just another name. Data gets analyzed, and processed. Over time an algorithm is setup, and constantly changed a bit, in order to improve, and make better decisions in the future. Now the difference here is that modern AI systems never sleep, and moreover it gets input from often a large amount of people. This makes it able to improve the algorithm faster, and better since the changes are based on input from all of these users, instead of just one - in the case of the human brain.

It’s still early days for AI, but we do already see some great advances in how it can assist people in various different situations and industries. The health industry does already benefit from some of the early research. Google’s DeepMind assists physicians during surgery operations, and it’s now able to recognize early stages of blindness in people, which could potentially help doctors give the right medication, and in the end avoid that risk. Other examples of advances, but just as significant, are natural language recognition, which makes technology able to understand what you say, automatically subtitle a video for deaf people, or translate an ongoing conversation in real-time between you and and another person. We already see examples of these products, and they do actually work quite well. In the future, we could all talk our mother’s tongue, and just have a computer in our ear live translating the conversation.

Furthermore, object detection and face recognition already help people to automatically organize their pictures, make them searchable, so you can find that one picture with your significant other at the beach with a cocktail in your hand. Object detection is also already seen in various industries, for instance a cucumber manufacturer uses the technology to automatically determine a cucumber’s size, and thereby sort them into different categories, label them and it’s ready for the grocery store. Blind people use the technology to get a description of a picture on Facebook, or get the text read out loud for them - thus making smartphones available to a new group of people, and assist them in navigating a device that other people take for granted. This vanishes the need for a human assistant, thus increasing privacy and anonymity. The same technology could potentially be introduced in voting booths during elections.

There are many examples already now. One place where many of us have most likely already experienced some of the advantages of AI, is in the palm of your hand, the personal (mobile) assistants. Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Facebook’s M, etc. They are already out there, and ready to assist you in your daily life. Help you with time consuming tasks, unclutter your inbox, provide you with information about the departure of your next train, when you should leave to reach the office in time, or if there is a traffic jam on the way then provide you with an alternative route. For instance, Google Maps uses speed data from various devices to automatically detect traffic jams, where it starts and ends, and how long it will take to get through. Similarly, Facebook uses AI to determine what you should see in your personal news feed, and it’s in the same way in constant movement based on how you interact with your timeline. How long time you look at a specific post, if you tap it, like it, comment or just look at the comments. All of these things happen automatically in the background, a constant exchange between Facebook’s servers and your smartphone. This exchange of data should hopefully improve your experience with Facebook, and other services, to use them more, and in the end benefit from these improvements.

We, at Forecast, use data from various different organizations and projects in a similar way to constantly improve our AI-technology. Whenever a project manager or a team member enter some data into the Forecast system, there’s an inflow of data. This data is anonymized, and analyzed to improve the algorithm for everybody’s benefit. The algorithm is used to estimate some of the unknown values that teams are dealing with on a daily basis, time estimates, budget, scheduling and employee utilization, etc. Making you able to make better decisions, which are based on a more solid and justified foundation. This will hopefully lead to better and more profitable projects, in time and on budget.

My name is Kasper Nymand, I was born in 1994, grew up in the countryside of Roskilde, Denmark, and spent quite an amount of my spare time playing around with technology, electronics and gadgets. I’ve always had an interest in new technology, which probably stems from my father at Sony, and my two older brothers, one being a web developer.

My two brothers, and I.

I got my first desktop computer in around the year of 2000, but one thing I clearly remember was when my dad brought gadgets home, especially an intelligent, now discontinued, robot dog by Sony, called AIBO. Such an inspiration.

Sony AIBO

Besides technology, I really enjoy marketing, psychology, and staying up-to-date on the newest tendencies, lifestyles, innovation and products. I’m very open-minded by nature, and I really enjoy spending time around people from all over the world, which is also why I chose the international study programme in Marketing Management, at Cphbusiness (Copenhagen Business Academy).

At some point, you will probably also find me traveling the world by myself, or with a soulmate.

Hopefully be in another company, since it's mandatory for my education right now. 😉 Else I would probably work full-time on a personal project, do some blogging, or what not. I really enjoy the startups environment, feel the whole business grow, and hopefully make at least a small difference for some people in the other end.

What one word describes my childhood?

Interesting. Well, I’ve always been a person who questioned everything, and thought of ways to do something better, improve it, or make it align with my personal values. But not really in the outgoing way, I was more considering all the opportunities myself, and tried to study the matter by myself.

I spent quite some time figuring myself out, and tried to discover the definition of myself. I’ve dealt with anxiety, and still often do at times, but through psychology I’ve learned to handle it, and keep a balance in my life.

How do I wind down after work?

After a great day at work, or just after an overwhelming time out; I really enjoy to go out in nature, preferably near the ocean, and just do nothing. At other times, music is the answer. Great music can really get the feelings flowing.

A beach in Switzerland

If I was to tell one person “Thank You” for helping me become the person I am today, who would it be and why?

Well, it’s very hard to choose just one person. My closest friends mean a bunch to me, and have really helped me become the person I am today. There are only a few people that I can truly recharge my energy around. I can’t and will not choose between any of them.

One person though that has helped me quite much in many ways, even though I have never met him in person yet (even after 10+ years), is Cláudio from Brazil. He’s a physician, and runs his own office in Uberaba.

A greeting from Brazil

What movie or fictional character do I most identify with?

To be honest, I don’t really watch many movies. When I do, I rarely remember the characters by name afterwards.

What's the thing I enjoy doing the most?

Even though it can drain me at times; spending time with the people closest to me can make any period look brighter. It doesn’t always matter what we do, if anything, but just being there together is everything.

If you really knew me, you'd know _____.

How weird, spontaneous and random my humor can be, while still being very mindful about everything, and spend most of my time in my mind. I can look very serious on the outside, while being super playful, and adventurous on the inside. I often spend time in my bed, lights off, and just relax.

If I were to start a company from scratch, what values would I build it on?

Transparency, global, open, health, comfort and personal growth.

What's the number one thing I want to achieve in life?

Being happy, grow, build a family, and a solid group of friends I truly love and care about.

What characteristic do I most admire in others?

Being real. Say what you mean, and do what you say. So inspiring.

What superpower would I like to have?

It might sound clichée, but I would really like to be able to fix people’s problems with the blink of an eye. I believe that helping others, reflects at least the same back to yourself.

What’s the most important lesson I’ve learned in the last year?

Be yourself, since that is the person that real friends should care about. Don't care about the people who try to bring you down. Get rid of those.

How do I act when I'm stressed out?

Depends on the situation. I can get a bit anxious, but usually I manage to stay focused, and get the job done in the best possible way. If it gets too much, I like to take a walk in a peaceful area, refresh my mind, and think things through.

Sports or other activities?

I really enjoy being active, it can be a great mood-booster, clear your mind, and at the same time it feels awesome to be healthy. Whether it’s fitness, running, body-weight, hiking, dog walking, or just taking a walk. It all helps. I’m also the type of person that likes to track everything with gadgets, and see how I’m doing compared to previous periods, and my other friends.